How Sovereign Wealth Funds End

The pension reserve funds were set up to try to use the ‘power of finance and compounding’ to take some short-term surpluses to meet long-term unfunded pension obligations. It’s a neat idea, which hasn’t played out as hoped. For example, Ireland used its fund to bailout Irish banks, Portugal has tapped its Fund to the tune of €6 billion to meet its fiscal obligations, and Spain has used its Reserve Fund to prop up its bond market. You get the idea.

Peter Costello and Reserve Bank Transparency

The Reserve Bank of Australia has used powers given to it by Treasurer Peter Costello to issue a “conclusive certificate” to prevent publication of the RBA board’s minutes, saying their release is not in the public interest.

The Reserve Bank’s action on Thursday 25 November came just three days before the start of a hearing in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in which The Weekend Australian newspaper was set to challenge the RBA’s decision under the Freedom of Information Act not to release the minutes of its meetings and voting records for 2003/04.

We Welcome Foreign Investment, Except When We Don’t

I have an op-ed in today’s Australian arguing the federal coalition had the right policy on foreign direct investment 24 years ago when it was committed to abolishing the Foreign Investment Review Board. The recent debate on this issue within the coalition almost perfectly mirrors a similar debate in the late 1980s, only this time, the National Party seems to be getting its way. Full text below the fold (may differ slightly from published version).

Welcome to Australia. That’ll be $25,000

The time may be ripe to adopt a market-based solution to the political obstacles to obtaining more workers from overseas.

Charging immigrants a fee to help fund new infrastructure could help ease worries about overcrowding as more people become permanent residents. For refugees, paying the Australian government to come here would be a lot more attractive than paying a people smuggler. Combined with an increased refugee intake, it should help undermine the smugglers’ “business model”.

In theory, politicians who accept the free movement of capital, and goods and services, across international borders, should also accept the free movement of labour. In practice, both sides of Australian politics squabble over who can best control the inflow of new workers and their families, especially those who have fled political violence…

The migration program for 2012-13 of 190,000, including a humanitarian component of 13,750 refugees, is likely to stay around that level for several years. It is doubtful if a deferred fee of $20,000 to $25,000 per adult, with a discount for upfront payments and couples, would deter suitable applicants. If 190,000 permanent new settlers paid an average of only $17,500 each year, this would raise more than $3.3 billion annually when the scheme matured.

In my CIS Policy Monograph, Hands, Mouths, and Minds I suggested an auction scheme rather than a flat fee for permanent migration rights, including the humanitarian quota. However, an auction scheme should not be viewed primarily as a revenue-raising measure, but rather as a selection device. Prospective migrants have much more knowledge about their potential for success in Australia than bureaucrats in Canberra attempting to centrally plan the labour market. An auction scheme allows potential migrants to act on their superior knowledge while enabling the Australian government to economise on migrant selection processes by focusing only on security assessments.

FDI Restrictions for Thee But Not for Me

Qantas is lobbying politicians for FDI restrictions to prevent Etihad from acquiring Virgin or to ease the foreign ownership restrictions in the Qantas Sale Act. Australia’s Hansonite political class will likely choose the former over the latter, at least in the short-run. In the long-run, however, the government will probably have to choose between a majority foreign-owned Qantas or taking Qantas back into public ownership as a loss-making ward of the state.

Wayne Swan at Home and Abroad II

“In a pattern now all too familiar, European politicians are still well behind the curve, having failed to take advantage of the months of relative calm,” Swan said in the text of a speech to be delivered at a Euromoney forum in Sydney today. “Put simply, what is required is some basic political courage.”

Sources confirmed yesterday that Trade Minister Craig Emerson won approval for the shift with the backing of Ms Gillard, but only after her deputy, Wayne Swan, attacked the policy as lacking a political constituency. The sources said that, although the Treasurer, who has a long record of advocacy for trade liberalisation, did not attack the principles of the policy, he questioned the political wisdom of proceeding with the change at a time when the government was already fighting for reform on a range of other fronts, including the carbon tax.

Taxing US Human Capital Flight

US embassies around the world are accustomed to queues of people seeking to migrate to America. More recently, a new type of queue has been developing: American ex-pats lining up for the 10-minute and $450 ceremony in which they renounce their US citizenship. According to the Federal Register, the number of Americans renouncing their US citizenship or residency increased from 231 in 2008 to 1,781 in 2011. The US embassy in Bern, Switzerland, was recently reorganised to clear a growing backlog of citizenship renouncers.

This human capital flight gained prominence with the decision of Brazilian-born Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin to renounce his US citizenship and take up residency in Singapore. This led to accusations of tax avoidance, ingratitude and disloyalty levelled at the former immigrant to the US.

The accusation of tax avoidance is wrong. Under US tax law, expatriation is a deemed disposal for capital gains tax purposes. Saverin will pay taxes on his accrued Facebook capital gains while he was a US citizen. Only subsequent gains, if any, will benefit from the absence of capital gains taxes in Singapore.

The Saverin case nonetheless prompted senators Charles Schumer and Bob Casey to propose a new law, the Ex-Patriot Act, which would ban expatriates from ever re-entering America and tax an ex-citizen’s capital gains at a punitive 30% for 10 years. The Ex-Patriot Act has obvious similarities with the laws imposed by some of history’s worst regimes.

The US government has long made life difficult for its expats, taxing them on their global income, but the growing human capital flight from America has little to do with tax minimisation. The compliance burden resulting from the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and other new laws have made it increasingly costly to be an American abroad. Foreign firms are becoming reluctant to hire Americans, and foreign financial institutions increasingly refuse to deal with them because of the US government’s growing administrative overreach.

Rather than persecuting human capital flight, US senators would do well to consider why American citizenship is increasingly seen as a burden and not an asset.

Euro Crisis Vindicates Friedman’s Big Idea

I have an op-ed in today’s Business Spectator arguing that the euro crisis should be viewed primarily as a vindication of Milton Friedman’s pioneering 1953 essay, ‘The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates.’

Not mentioned in the op-ed, but Friedman’s essay had its origins in a 1950 memo he wrote as a consultant to the Office of Special Representative for Europe, United States Economic Cooperation Administration. The essay references many of the problems with exchange rate regimes in Europe at that time.

The Western Australian Future Fund: A Solution in Search of a Problem

I have an op-ed in today’s West Australian making the case against the proposed Western Australian Future Fund. As I note in the article, the WA Future Fund nonetheless improves on the federal model by avoiding the establishment of an expensive new funds management operation that duplicates existing capabilities. The federal Future Fund incurred expenses of $444m in 2010-11.

Intergenerational Conflict: Pagan versus Gruen

I have an article at The Conversation referencing the Pagan-Gruen exchange at the Melbourne Institute’s Intergen+10 Workshop (you can listen to the exchange here). As I note in the article, whether the 2010 IGR growth assumptions were really the outcome of a political process is less important that the perception on the part of serious observers that they could be. This is something that needs to be addressed.

It is interesting to compare how the last IGR compiled under the Howard government in 2007 characterised Australia’s long-term debt position compared to the 2010 IGR. The 2007 IGR said that:

Demographic and other factors are projected to place significant pressure on government finances over the longer term and result in an unsustainable path for net debt towards the end of the projection period.

If Adobe Acrobat’s search function is right, the word ‘unsustainable’ never appears in the 2010 IGR. The 2007 IGR was a much more candid document in relation to the long-run fiscal outlook.

A New Broom at the FIRB?

The former investment banker, who has been on the board of FIRB since 2009 and took over as chairman last month, says FIRB is making a greater effort to communicate the government’s foreign investment policies through its website and in briefing sessions for advisers. “It is important for all our constituencies—the Australian public, Australian business, foreign investors and their governments—to understand that the processes FIRB goes through are sensible and rigorous, and open and consistent,” he says. “Being a little more forthcoming, and having a little more transparency, will actually reduce, for some, the suspicion that we hear or read about from time to time.”

Wilson says FIRB is now putting up a lot more on its website about Australia’s foreign investment policies.

The FIRB has some catching up to do when it comes to posting things on their web site. The fundamental problem with the legislation the FIRB administers remains:

“There is only one test—is the proposal contrary to the national interest? What that may be varies over time depending on economic circumstances, community attitudes, geopolitics, a whole gamut of things.”

Then there is this:

“So, I wouldn’t have thought talking to FIRB about a concept or a possible transaction would tip you over the ASX disclosure threshhold.”

Probably not quite the level of certainty investors are looking for, but perhaps a good quote for the M&A lawyers to file away for future reference.